Some websites are available only from US. Or some streaming service allows certain content only from US.

Why does such geo restriction exist? What is the benefit for the company to implement this?

      • Willem@kutsuya.dev
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        1 year ago

        Europe was named after the Greek Phoenician princess Europa, same as the planet was. Also a lot of languages call the continent Europa. You could almost consider it to be the more accurate name.

        • BrikoX@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Didn’t know about the name origin, thanks. But context also matters.

          • Poondude@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And under the given context, you thought it was more likely they were talking about a moon of Jupiter then a continent? “Context matters” after all

          • ohmyiv@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            If you can’t figure out the context by the general conversation, that says more about you than the little typo you’re complaining about.

        • BrikoX@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          It’s only Europa if you are talking in German. Same applies to other languages (including mine). But in English context it’s Europe.

          This evolved into a lot more than i should of have. All I meant with my original comement was to lighty nudge the user to correct the spelling without making a big deal out of it by making it educational at the the same time.

  • HamsterRage
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    1 year ago

    Very often the copyright holders of the content have different distribution arrangements for different countries/regions. If you can get the content from some other region, then your local content provider isn’t getting whatever fees/and revenue they would get from you.

    • The fact that these agreements continue to exist (often pushing people in different regions to piracy of various content) proves that piracy is not the problem the industry tries to claim.

      Clearly, continuing to make these antiquated agreements that are logically nonsensical in the age of global streaming services, and which restrict paying, play by the rules customers ONLY, must be evidence that they continue to be more profitable than removing the piracy motive by abandoning such agreements.

      The are certainly not in any way whatsoever impacting what is available by alternative means, and they are pushing people to look for such means.

  • lancelot_the_ocelot@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    On top of all the legit reasons here my former, itsy bitsy company geo blocked everything not US/Canada because our customer base was entirely US based and that wasn’t changing. The only traffic we got from overseas ips was looking for vulnerabilities. So why not just block it.

  • SHITPOSTING_ACCOUNT@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Many sites have little (real/legitimate) traffic outside of their country. Traffic from most countries also generates a lot less ad revenue per user than US or other “rich country” traffic. That means the sites have a limited motivation to allow access from other countries.

    At the same time, allowing traffic from other countries may force them to deal with a lot of spam/hacking/DDoS/scraping/bot and general garbage traffic, and complying with foreign privacy laws like GDPR.

    This makes it easier to just block the traffic.

    This is particularly infuriating when it’s a government web site and you’re a citizen abroad trying to access an essential government service. (In those cases it’s mostly done to avoid malicious traffic.)

    US news sites often do it because they get little non-US traffic and their sites are absolutely infested with ads and trackers that they can’t make GDPR compliant with any reasonable amount of effort.

  • PonyOfWar@pawb.social
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    Countries have different laws and regulations that companies have to adhere to if they want to sell a product or publish a website there.

    Additionally, they might have bought the rights to stream a movie in one country, but not others. Offering that movie in other countries would then be a copyright violation.

  • cccc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If the website is selling physical goods it could be to prevent having to export. That can be anything from having to deal with different laws to just plain old more work with customs and everything.

    • dan1101@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yes, like to ship to the new UK we are supposed to register with a UK government agency, collect the customs on each shipment, and pay it to the UK government monthly/quarterly. Or…we can just not ship to the UK which is a lot easier.

  • Tywèle [she|her]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Sometimes it’s because of certain laws from the EU for example that they don’t want to follow like the GDPR for example. Other times it’s because of licensing in case of streaming services.

    • ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      This is a big one. It’s a lot of work to implement GDPR and sometimes it’s easier to disallow traffic from Europe than to re-architect your back end to keep European data on European servers, allow for users to request data deletion, etc.

  • Bazzatron@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I hit a lot of American sites that want to process my data in a malicious way that would be illegal.

    Rather than fix the issue, the side just redicts to a “we’re sorry to our European friends” - like fuck off, it’s been years you cunts.

    Anyway, to answer your question - it protects them from legal liability.

  • benwubbleyou@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Another reason could be for test market. For example, some products launch into smaller places as a test bed to see if they will be successful at a larger scale. Some websites and services start this way as well.

  • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Traditionally, it’s been about money.

    More recently, with the introduction of the EU’s laws on cookies, it’s been about compliance. A website in the US might not wish to comply with the EU cookie laws, and elect to keep its articles geoblocked outside of the US.

  • Wothe@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think the reason might be related to the cost. For example, ChatGPT may not be available in Iran because in order for them to use ChatGPT, OpenAI would have to implement a server in Iran’s network, which could be costly. If only 1% of the total population in Iran would pay for GPT-4, it would be impossible to make any profit.